Activity

A religious offering is only a sacrifice when it is meaningful and belongs to the one doing the offering. Animals who do not offer their lives willingly and must be dragged and held down for slaughter at the Eid al-Adha are not meaningful sacrifices but victims of a practice that is not actually required by Islam. Like so many cruelties the world over, both to animals and to other humans, animal sacrifice by Muslims, Hindus, bullfighters, etc. is defended as cultural tradition. But like public executions of criminals, public animal killing rituals must be ended if the civilizing process of humanity is to move forward. Public spectacles of violence and cruelty to animals have the same corrosive effect on humans’ development of empathy and morality, and lead to the cheap disregard of animal life that is driving the extinction of wild species on land and sea as well as the proliferation of livestock on every clearable acre. Must there be blood in the streets of cities the world over for us to see the harm we have done to the creatures with whom we might be peacefully sharing the earth?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/14/rivers-of-blood-dhaka-bangladesh-eid-animal-sacrifices